Ashley Lanham’s professionalism and friendliness help make the Reading Lab a comforting place for all students. Aaron Zhang | Staff Photographer | [email protected]
Ashley Lanham: Making a home away for self and students
Andrea Michel
Guest Writer
Following the flow of students, moving single-file through the narrow corridors. Where is this place again? Finally, it appears. Tucked away on the third floor of Rodda Hall South is the City College Reading Lab.
In this modest room, students come to fulfill their reading competency requirement, a component of the Los Rios District placement test. Take a peek through the doorway and look to the left, then to the right and see a young woman typing with focus. She looks up kindly, smiles, and says, “Hi, do you have a question?”
This is Ashley Lanham, lab manager of the Reading Lab. Standing at around 5 feet tall with brown bobbed hair and glasses, Lanham is not an imposing figure. Instead, there is an air of warmth and unspoken determinedness to her. She knows her stuff.
Though Lanham has only been at City College since 2016, she has left her influence on the everyday goings-on of the Reading Lab. For example, starting in September instructors implemented a system to make lab classes more streamlined with the lecture portion of reading classes. Lanham has been hoping to put in place a more cohesive system like this one. Though the creation of the new system was a collective effort, it demonstrated the underlying motivation Lanham possesses: helping students attain success.
As the first person in her family to graduate from college, Lanham understands the struggle of navigating the system on your own.
“It was very difficult in the college process because I didn’t really have anyone to help me through it so I had to ask my friends whose parents went to college,” she recounts. “‘Oh, what are you doing? Studying for the ACT?’ –‘Okay, I should probably study for the ACT.’”
After high school, Lanham found herself moving from Chicago’s sleepy suburbs to Wisconsin to attend Beloit College, a small liberal arts school. There she found a wealth of opportunity. For the first time, she says she really considered the question all young adults are inevitability asked by their aunts and uncles during holiday dinners: “What do you want to do for the rest of your life?”
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“I moved from Illinois to Wisconsin to Arizona to D.C. to South Dakota to California,” she says. “I taught for Teach for America [after college] and was placed in Phoenix.”
While in Arizona, Lanham got a taste of other avenues in which she could help others, something she has carried with her to City College. She was also able to indulge in her love of hiking by taking to the arid trails in the mountain ranges surrounding Phoenix.
After her time in Arizona drew to a close, Lanham worked briefly in Washington, D.C., and had a momentary stop-over in South Dakota. Next, she landed at Cosumnes River College before applying for her job here at City College.
Longtime tutors in the Reading Lab — Blossom Lee and Star Welch — who have worked with Lanham for three semesters, have nothing but praise for her. It is customary for Lanham to waltz up to the counter in the lab and greet them with a very professional, but deadpan, “Hello, and how are you doing today?”
But in just a blink, she will quickly stifle a grin, and break out into a laugh at the awkward pause.
“Ashley is very professional,” Lee says, nodding thoughtfully, “but she isn’t afraid to laugh.”
Welch, who says her tutoring position is the first job she’s had, enjoys Lanham’s professionalism.
“She’s very patient, Welch says. “She was very attentive, made sure I understood everything.”
Ever-endearing and caring of students in the Reading Lab, it is evident Lanham has found her place in the City College community.
